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Harrison Wind: Peyton Watson on his breakout stretch last season: "It was an experience for me where I got to once again prove people wrong a little bit about me -- not only me but the team as well." "I think a lot of people looked at us as a team that would completely just plummet as soon as we lost our best player."
Oh No He Didn't: Peyton Watson on what he learned from playing with Nikola Jokic: "I think my IQ for the game has gotten a lot better just playing with him. Knowing how to play with a superstar is something that's invaluable in this league with so much talent. I think you need to always know how to play off of other players and how to make other players better, even if you don't necessarily have the ball in your hands"
The Nuggets, I'm told, have emerged as a team to watch in pursuit of Cam Whitmore. Whitmore, selected 20th overall in the 2023 NBA Draft, was recently waived by Cleveland after the Cavaliers acquired him as part of the five-team megatrade that landed Peyton Watson in Northeast Ohio.
Peyton Watson: Salt of the earth! Cant say how grateful I am for the brotherhood me and AG have 💪🏾Harrison Wind: Aaron Gordon on Peyton Watson: "That's my dog. It's deeper than basketball with Peyton and I. Our family members go to the same church. Peyton is like my brother. Happy for him, the situation that he's in." "Obviously we would have loved to have him. But it worked out the way that it should of -- it was supposed to."
Harrison Wind: Aaron Gordon on Peyton Watson: "That's my dog. It's deeper than basketball with Peyton and I. Our family members go to the same church. Peyton is like my brother. Happy for him, the situation that he's in." "Obviously we would have loved to have him. But it worked out the way that it should of -- it was supposed to."
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He also spoke on why it was important for him to get the team out of their comfort zone during the Nuggets’ mini-camp in Puerto Rico, as well as his response to the departure of Peyton Watson. “That’s my dawg, but it’s deeper than basketball with Peyton and I,” he said. “Our families members go to the same church, Peyton’s just like my brother. I’m happy for him, the situation that he’s in. Obviously, we would’ve loved to have him, but it worked out the way it should’ve. That it was supposed to.”
Meanwhile, the Nuggets and Peyton Watson were nowhere close to a contract agreement. Watson’s side had asked for north of $25 million annually at the outset, believing him to be worth more than Braun, who was coming off his worst season. Both sides began to explore sign-and-trade options. Denver took calls from the Clippers, Bucks, Hawks and Trail Blazers. Nothing gained much traction. Sixth Man of the Year runner-up Jaime Jaquez was floated in preliminary talks with Milwaukee, but those conversations were entirely conceptual — the Bucks never made an official sign-and-trade offer, league sources said. Denver would’ve been intrigued by the possibility of adding him if an offer had materialized.
Privately, Watson’s camp had decided he wouldn’t play. The exact state of his health might forever remain murky, as it depends on who you ask. The Nuggets felt strongly that Watson could’ve suited up by the end of the series but was slow-playing his return to protect his contract value, five league sources told The Denver Post both during the playoffs and afterward. Another source close to Watson, however, said that he was in no position to return at any point during the series, and that Paul had intervened to tell Watson it would be unsafe to play on a bad hamstring with free agency on the horizon. Injury reports suggesting that he might be available throughout the series, the source contends, were merely an example of gamesmanship by Denver in a tightly contested series against a rival.
In either case, the upcoming contract negotiation was very much a consideration, leaving people at every level of the Nuggets organization frustrated with how the situation was handled, sources told The Post. It stood in contrast to other recent examples of Denver’s players attempting to play through injuries in the playoffs: Braun in 2026, Porter in 2025, Gordon in both years. The source close to Watson said that Gordon was among the people advising him to be careful with his return.
Fullcourtpass: The Nuggets only made ONE offer to Peyton Watson and never countered after it was declined, per @BennettDurando “The Nuggets put in an offer of $18M AAV over 4 years, with escalating salary and a team option.”
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“First of all, Peyton is a great, great kid, very talented, super talented, good personality, playing hard, all those, I mean, of course, losing someone like someone who was drafted by our organization. So, of course, losing someone like that, it’s not easy,” Stojakovic said to “Basketball Network“. “So, now we can like, now we can, I don’t know, we can be sad about that or we can be like, okay, it is what it is and we’re going to do next step and do whatever is necessary to rebuild us and to find the right way and the right direction to win championship.”
MPJ: What was the emotions like kind of as the contract talks were going on throughout the summer? Peyton Watson: You know, it was a bittersweet feeling when the news finally came. I remember during the summer, just going through the ebbs and flows of negotiations and talks with the team and my agents and just understanding that we had gotten to a point where Denver was between a rock and a hard place financially. Everybody was aware of them facing the tax bill, and just kind of the way things shook out at the beginning with free agency, it was like a few teams had cap space, but then the cap just dried up super quick. A lot of teams were not willing to go through the war that restricted free agency is. You see, there's still some really really good restricted free agents on the market. I'm lucky to have gotten a resolution with my situation as fast as I did. like we me and you talked about it, but this could have stretched out all summer.
Michael Porter Jr.: It's just crazy how the media can like… and that's part of the reason I like doing this podcast cuz they can put narratives onto people that are just the furthest thing from the truth. You know what I mean? And it's just like it was, me and you talked on the phone about that and I told you don't trip about that cuz I've been through my fair share of smear campaigns, you know what I mean? Peyton Watson: Absolutely. And, you know, a lot of times with us as the athlete, we don't even know where the information's coming from. Like, we're not putting this out. We're not saying anything like this to anybody. So, when people are seeing that, it's just like this guy's comparing himself to his teammates. This guy sat out the playoffs. This guy's doing that. And it's just like all of these things are just like a narrative that somebody's putting out there that's completely untrue. One, and then two, it's just like an indictment on my character, which is even crazier.
Peyton Watson: We ended up winning the series in six vs the Suns. But bro, it was a like super intense contentious series. And I just remember one of the practices um for either I think it was game 1 or game 2. I was playing KD on the scout team and there was a play that we had ran a few times over and I was just having fun at practice being able to be that guy to kind of just let loose and just try to get off and score on you guys. And I remember like at one point Coach Malone had asked me in front of the team. He was like, "Okay, what's the name of this play that we've been running that you just ran?" And I remember just being like, "I don't know. Like, I really just don't know. I didn't know." And I just remember like his face turning red. And him like just chewing me out, saying “you’re the youngest one in here. You should be paying attention. We give you a book with all the plays on it. You should know these things. You've been playing KD for x amount of practices and you don't know these things. Like, that just shows that you haven't been paying attention and maybe you aren't ready to play if I call your number." He went on like a tear. Even worse than that. You could hear a pin drop in the practice facility, but I remember just feeling embarrassed, pissed off. I'm like, how could he single me out like that when I've been here trying to help prepare and get everybody right, but at the same time, I felt embarrassed because I didn't know. He asked me a question I wasn't prepared to answer it. And I just remember taking that moment. And just since then I've always just been hyper focused on the game plan, the scouting, all that sh*t like I know everything now. But I remember that moment stinging. And I remember even Nikola [Jokic] came up to me and he was like, "He didn't have to do that."
